From the campaign trail: [Link]

“If she [Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

The Second Amendment is the one that codifies the right to bear arms.

Trump certainly didn't create the level of depravity in public discourse. But, just like with everything else he touches, he slapped his name all over it and called it his. Let's not forget that he burst onto the political scene by championing the ridiculous "birther" nonsense; again, co-opting someone else's crackpot idea. He's also embraced the wingnut media by making Breitbart's Bannon a chief advisor and even giving Infowars - Sandy Hook Massacre denier Alex Jones' website - White House press credentials.

Right wind media and politicians have been stoking resentment and fuelling anger towards "the other" for a long time. Yesterday's terror was a logical consequence of embracing and promoting violent rhetoric. The fact that it was a liberal crazie shooting up Republicans is just an aside.

Lastly, let's also not forget the recent deaths in Portland when two men had their throats cut for trying to stop a right wing crazie harrass a Muslim woman.

Nor the gunman who shot up the New York pizza restaurant named in the fantastical PizzaGate "scandal" because he wanted some answers.

Nor the Bundy clan out west who had an armed standoff with Federal law enforcement over cattle crazing rights and who later occupied a Federal office for a couple of weeks.

Nor Jared Miller, who participated in the first Bundy standoff and, later, with his wife, went on a shooting spree in Las Vegas that ended with 5 people dead, including themselves, two of the others being cops.

These are just a few recent events. All of them are despicable; but let's not try and pretend that there's any equivalency between right wing violence and left wing violence, because there truly isn't. And until a loonie-lefty blows up a building and kills 168 men, women and children, there won't be.

What is the point of this reply?

Is it....if Trump is an arsehole then we can be arseholes too? No, anyone doing this crap needs quite angry criticism....Trump got criticism for that stupid comment and quite rightly....Apart from that nut holding up Trump's head people just seem to accept it......Yet when it was Obama..

As for an equivalence between left and right wing violence I think you are totally wrong. There is a sub section of 'progressives' who make the nuts in the tea party look like they are boy scouts.

Edited by Stirlingsays (15 Jun 2017 9.09pm)

There is a distinct irony in a lone gunman targeting Republican politicians, who constantly voted down any kind of gun legislation and health care (and psychiatric care in the US makes its health care systems look positively benign).

Politics isn't about making sensible decisions. It's about pandering to stupid people who will vote for you.